Mitt Romney: The need for a mighty U.S. military

[Sailor]

Russia invades, China bullies, Iran spins centrifuges, the Islamic State (a terrorist threat “beyond anything that we’ve seen,” according to the defense secretary ) threatens — and Washington slashes the military. Reason stares.

Several arguments are advanced to justify the decimation of our defense. All of them are wrong.

The president asserts that we must move to “a new order that’s based on a different set of principles, that’s based on a sense of common humanity.” The old order, he is saying, where America’s disproportionate strength holds tyrants in check and preserves the sovereignty of nations, is to be replaced.

****

Some insist that our military is already so much stronger than that of any other nation that we can safely cut it back, again and again. Their evidence: the relative size of our defense budget. But these comparisons are nearly meaningless: Russia and China don’t report their actual defense spending, they pay their servicemen a tiny fraction of what we pay ours and their cost to build military armament is also a fraction of ours. More relevant is the fact that Russia’s nuclear arsenal is significantly greater than our own and that, within six years, China will have more ships in its navy than we do. China already has more service members. Further, our military is tasked with many more missions than those of other nations: preserving the freedom of the seas, the air and space; combating radical jihadists; and preserving order and stability around the world as well as defending the United States.

More here:
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitt-romney-the-world-needs-a-mighty-us-military/2014/09/04/f5234064-342d-11e4-a723-fa3895a25d02_story.html

A supporting argument, also (and surprisingly) from the WaPo:
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/wishful-thinking-on-the-defense-budget/2014/05/10/7d11a176-d7ab-11e3-95d3-3bcd77cd4e11_story.html

[101ABN]

It's amazing to reflect on the prescience of Bush, Palin, and Romney in contrast to the fecklessness and detachment of this president.

[warrior1972]

one question:


HOW ARE WE GOING TO PAY FOR IT?

[Sailor]

Let me answer with another question -

Can we afford NOT to?

[warrior1972]

Sept 7, 2014 15:12:25 GMT -8 Sailor said:

Let me answer with another question -

Can we afford NOT to?

Sorry.

We've had a war in Afghanistan, and two in Iraq, and, for a decade, we've been running defense budgets larger than the next twenty-five countries, friend and foe, put together (including the Obama defense budgets.)


Those wars have provided us with ZERO to show for the effort, with Iraq being the primary front for ISIS (along with Syria), and Afghanistan is just as much a basket case now as it was when we arrived (our "friends", the Russians, could have told us all about that befoeehand... as a matter of fact, some of them did.)


So, we've spent thousands of American lives and trillions of American dollars, while our primary foes, Russia and China, have re-armed and trained new, more capable armed forces, vastly IMPROVED their economic statuses, and now, we are looking surprised when these two countries, who have been our primary enemies for more than half a century, decide to take us on?


And one more thing.

In the past, a large portion of our deficit spending came from borrowing BILLIONS from CHINA.

Where are you going to go to borrow money to oppose THEM?




GOD....


It is what it is.

By the way....


www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/wishful-thinking-on-the-defense-budget/2014/05/10/7d11a176-d7ab-11e3-95d3-3bcd77cd4e11_story.html


Good article.